YouTube Decides to De-Monetize Small Content Creators

Since its inception, YouTube has been the launching point for countless content creators, many of whom have made considerable income through its ad revenue program. Previously, content creators were able to qualify to benefit from ad revenue after reaching a total of 10,000 lifetime views from their videos. However, YouTube has since changed the requirements for qualifying for these benefits. Now, creators must meet a more stringent criteria, including having 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 hours of viewing time in the past 12 months. This has caused considerable outrage for small content creators, who have argued it is not fair that their channels will no longer be able to receive any income. Users who do not meet this criteria will no longer have access to the tools that allow them to “monetize” their videos.

In a blog post that was posted by the company, they said that in order to ensure the quality of future monetized content, these changes are necessary to maintain a level of standards. They stated, “Though these changes will affect a significant number of channels, 99% of those affected were making less than $100 per year in the last year, with 90% earning less than $2.50 in the last month. Any of the channels who no longer meet this threshold will be paid what they’ve already earned based on our AdSense policies. After thoughtful consideration, we believe these are necessary compromises to protect our community.”

This is following what was called the “adpocalypse” where the company saw a huge dip in advertisement revenue. Stemming from several controversies that racked YouTube, including bad press that was born from the aftermath of Logan Paul’s “suicide forest” vlog, many advertisers stopped paying YouTube to stream their advertisements. This has been cited by many small content creators as being the reason YouTube has made these changes, stating that they are trying to rebuild from the bad press the video gave the company.

While small content creators are complaining about the changes, there is a smaller group of creators that are in full support of them: YouTube’s top-tier channels. Channels like Keemstar, Shibby, and PewDiePie all voiced their disapproval with the smaller YouTube community, citing the hardships they faced when first starting off on the video-sharing site.

PewDiePie, YouTube’s top subscribed-to content creator, tweeted “Just to be clear, I didn’t earn anything off YouTube, not a single dollar until I hit 25k subs. If all you’re earning is $1 then YouTube probably is loosing more money just to pay that to you. As much as I typically hate their business practice, this one makes sense to me.”

Keemsar, another well-known creator on Youtube, said “YouTubes new rule of taking away monetization from channels with less than 1000 subs is a good idea. There are so many clone channels that re-upload other peoples content with ads and they don’t care if they get caught or get banned they just make another channel.”

The coming year will be a test to smaller content creators who will continue to rush to meet these new guidelines in order to keep their monetized videos. Either way, it seems YouTube is not slowing down anytime soon with continuous content being pumped out every day.